The Protected Areas Conservation Trust (PACT) this morning presented two Belizeans with scholarships to attend Incae University in Costa Rica. The scholarship comes as part of a memorandum of understanding in which will finance one of the scholarships fully while it will finance half of the other. Director of PACT Valerie Woods-Smith today told us that the scholarships fall in line with PACT's objective of capacity building for improved management of Belize's natural resources.
Valerie Smith, PACT Executive Director
“One of the programs we have at PACT is capacity building and so it is a portfolio that falls under the grants program and while we have given a lot of training grants to people studying raw conservation and learning the technicalities of it, we find out that to capture the sustainability aspect it would be good if we could identify how we merge a business plan with national resource management. INCAE which has been around for 40 years in Central America has been doing just that specifically with a Master’s in sustainable development so it fits quite nicely.”
The two persons awarded scholarships are Hector Alpuche and Carla Urbina. They'll pursue master degree studies for 2 years.